You’d have to pitchfork the Guardian’sMarina O’Loughlin to get here near Stoke House, the new restaurant from Will Ricker in London Victoria, again.

“An updated rework of the great British carvery” is what we’re promised from [Stoke House] owner Will Ricker (E&O and other noughties pseudo-Asian sleb magnets), and – with the exception of a heavy emphasis on the smoker and some imaginative and rather delicious salads (sweet potato with chilli; a butch red cabbage coleslaw; fat Israeli-style couscous with roast veg) – the, uh, joys of a British carvery are what we get. The short ribs are fibrous and taste of yesterday’s roast dinner, despite a modish flourish of pickled red onion and chilli; the chicken is cotton-woolly with no sign of the promised embrace of smoke; “smoked” cauliflower cheese, too (“bit on the side”: how very Travelodge), served in a dinky copper saucepan and pleasingly cheesy, is unsmoky.

Salmon comes as pallid, morose and wanly pink as an unwilling bridesmaid.
The music is deafening, the place full to the rafters: my hell doesn’t seem to be other people’s. The menu makes a song and dance about being “pocket-friendly”, but we manage, with two cocktails each, no wine and no dessert, to ramp up more than a ton of a bill. The staff are lovely despite it being open from breakfast to fall-down; the cocktails are decent. Ach, who am I kidding? To get me near the place again, I’d need to be pitchforked.

The Guardian’s Marina O’Loughlin wishes she had invested in Brighton’s crowd-funded, zero-waste Silo restaurant in Brighton.

“This rugged building on the fringes of Brighton’s North Laine purports to be the UK’s first zero-waste restaurant. You can’t miss it: dramatic inside and out, all concrete and brick and metal, it’s a million miles from Brighton’s occasionally girlie, retro aesthetic. And, despite arse-challenging seating made from pulped wood waste, it’s packed: boisterous parties, earnest computer-starers, breastfeeding mothers. I already love the place, if only because it would give Nigel Farage a violent dose of the vapours.

“You might suspect it to be vegan, or at least vegetarian, but chef/owner Douglas McMaster’s stint at St John means he’s happy with meat, as long as the whole beast is pressed into service. He brings a dish to our table: local venison shot by “my pal Trevor”. It ain’t pretty, a hummock of slow-braised meat on top of lentils laced with parsnip in various guises – crisps (dehydrated, not fried, I’d guess), batons, fried dice.

“Yes, it’s tempting to smirk, at some of the language especially: preserves made from “intercepted” mangoes, porridge from “activated grains”. They’ve just raised over 40 grand through crowdfunding, “to achieve a zero carbon delivery system, sourcing non-native products such as green coffee beans, red wine and cacao sailed in with only the wind as energy”. But it isn’t funny: waste from the food industry alone is estimated to cost £5b a year. In fact, instead of snickering, I wish I’d spotted it in time to make a small investment. After all, we’re looking at the future.”